TARGET

Google Zeitgeist: turning up every year in time for the brussels sprouts.

As it does each year, Google has published the so-called Zeitgeist (Spirit of the Times),
which surveys the searches made on Google to reveal the year’s dominant trends.

As for us, the Italian edition of Zeitgeist 2010 bears witness to the peninsula’s fascination with:
news stories about crime and criminals (Sarah Scazzi in particular);
football (“World Cup 2010” in pole position alongside the inescapable “Waka Waka”);
and how much other people are earning (“public sector pay” featuring among the fastest rising searches).

However, looking past the most predictable results (you could just as easily have asked the ‘man in the street’),
it’s amusing to observe, amongst searches on the meanings of words (for example, entering “what does X or Y mean?”),
the grip exerted on so many Italians by “bunga bunga”, and by “kippah”.
The skullcap, worn by Jewish men, owes this celebrity to the ‘remarks’ of Senator Ciarrapico,
and to the so-called Probiviri (the Committee of Honest Men of the political party Il Popolo della Libertà),
assembled against Fabio Granata. The identity of the men in this group has proved a particularly difficult mystery to unravel,
driving many Italians to search enthusiastically for them on Google.

From these few examples, we can deduce that politics, with its outbursts and colourful remarks,
brings terminology to the attention of Italians that is, clearly, unknown to them, and in doing so renews the language.
It is as though our politicians were the new pöetae novelli; we might even call them the true heirs of Dante & Co.
Of course, many also looked up the meaning of “sarcasm”, and this, too, tells us a lot about Italy’s linguistic customs.

Ultimately, there are many juicy titbits within Zeitgeist, not least of all the fact that,
as I have noted in the past, the seventh most popular word from all Google searches is the word “Google” itself.
However, we're getting dangerously close to ‘meta-searching’, and that’s a long story.

All that’s left to do is invite you to explore the ‘Spirit of the Times’ 2010
and perhaps let us know what you find most striking in those lists of words.